Catnip (18 page)

The seeming impossibility of their mission
practically caused Harry to question if he really
was
as
smart as everyone seemed to think he was. Up until now, all his
work had been in the cold confines of labs and didn’t involve
people. Having friends and falling for a cat-girl had changed
everything. Being honest, though, he shook his head. “I’m not sure
I can. I’m close, though.”

“Close don’t cut it,” the other man said, and
laughed as if he thought his previous phrase sounded funny. “You
know, I don’t know my real name, but I’m guessing I’m a
made-in-Russia product like your lady is. Funny, I think in
English, yet somehow I think I can speak Russian.”

“Try it.”

Doug took a deep breath and started to talk.
His speech came out garbled and it sounded like a gag had been
thrown over his mouth. Finally, he got frustrated and gave up with
a disgusted exhalation of breath. “Nope, can’t do it. I guess I’ll
have to be speaking good ol’ American English. They must have
programmed me differently.”

Harry kept his eyes on the road. Programmed
to do what, he wondered. Could it possible they really
were
spies, like Farrell said, or was this some kind of bizarre
experiment turned bad? The way ahead was dark and there didn’t seem
to be a light at the end of the tunnel. “Which way are we going, or
does it matter?”

Doug didn’t answer for a moment, and then he
said, “Take the next turnoff and head north.”

“Can you give me details or do I have to
guess?”

His canine-human guide gave a harrumphing
sound as if to dislodge a wad of phlegm. Harry watched him through
the rearview mirror as he leaned his head out the window, spit, and
pulled his head in again. “Are you okay?” he asked.

Doug nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. Something
inside me says go north. Anyway, it’s a chance to get out of the
city. The cops may not be looking for us where we’re headed.”

Harry had never been to New York so he had to
trust his passenger’s sense of where to go. The highway continued
and he drove well under the speed limit, as getting pulled over for
speeding was the
last
thing he wanted. After about an hour
the confines of the city gave way to trees and narrower roads. The
sky was still dark and he cut his speed way down. “Where are we
now?”

Doug said nothing for a moment, and then
replied, “We’re in the Catskill Mountains. We’ll be safe here.”

The irony of the name was not lost on Harry.
He kept driving and felt a stray whisker tickle his cheek. In a
quick fit he ripped it off—damn it, it hurt!—and stole a quick peek
at his face in the rearview mirror. There were still some stray
streaks of makeup on his cheeks. Without the makeup he appeared
more human, and then the thought of who his cargo was shamed him.
He had no right to complain…

Suddenly the engine started to sputter as
they climbed a winding hill. A quick look at the fuel gauge showed
they were running on empty. Oh, this couldn’t be happening at a
worse time. The car started to jerk, and thirty seconds later, with
a sudden sigh the engine died and they coasted to a stop along the
road. “We’re out of gas,” he announced. “What do we do now?”

“Sleep,” Doug’s answer came. “It’s late, I’m
tired and you need to rest up.”

It seemed like the wisest course of action.
He twisted around in his seat to look at his girlfriend. She lay on
her side, her chest moving rhythmically, eyes closed. “How’s
Anastasia doing?”

“She’s out,” Doug answered, and his voice
sounded very drowsy. “She’ll be fine in the morning. Trust me.”

Harry felt his own eyelids begin to close, so
he locked the doors—busted window notwithstanding—and lay down on
the seat to get some much needed rest.

“Hey, time to get up,” a voice announced.

Harry blinked his eyes and instantly woke up.
Sunlight streamed in through the glass, and it was warm and
inviting. Looking in the back seat, he didn’t find his girlfriend
there. “Where’d she go?” he asked no one in particular, and
suddenly remembered where he was.

Doug grinned and scratched the back of his
neck with his paw, giving out a satisfied grunt. “She went into the
forest to handle her problem.”

“What does that mean?”

He cleared his throat. “She went to the
bathroom.”

Harry got out of the car and stretched while
Doug did the same and then, acting on what seemed to be canine
instincts, unzipped his trousers, dropped to all fours, raised a
leg and peed out a thin stream of urine onto a nearby bush. “It’s
not like I’m marking my territory,” he said and zipped himself up.
“It’s more comfortable to go this way.”

He stood up and yawned. While stretching out,
a meow startled him. Anastasia strode gracefully toward them
holding her torn clothes to cover her private parts. Her wounds had
almost disappeared and she leaned against him. “Are you okay?”

Harry nodded and looked around. Where they’d
arrived, the foliage on either side of the road was dense, and
thick forest lay beyond their position. Doug added that there were
more than twenty varieties of tree here. “You got red cedar, alder,
birch, pear, white oak, and pine trees up here.”

“You’re a real encyclopedia, aren’t you?”
Harry asked.

“It’s always good to have the info on hand,
don’t you think?”

The road continued on in a straight pattern
and led upwards. The air was clear and sweet smelling, a product of
the cedar pollen, and it was a distinct change from the sewer he’d
been in only a few hours earlier, even though it was only a few
degrees cooler than in the city. He inhaled a deep breath, listened
for the sound of oncoming cars, but nothing came their way. Quiet
ruled with the exception of the buzzing of some insects. “I’m just
a little tired. How are…um, how are you feeling?”

“A lot better,” her reply came. “Do we have a
plan? I’m hungry, and we can’t stay out here too long.”

Doug walked over, hawked up a wad and turned
his head to spit it out. “Sorry for my bad manners,” he apologized.
“My throat’s a little swollen. It must be the change in the
air.”

“Where exactly are we?” Harry asked.

Doug swept his arm around. “I don’t know how
I know, but we’re on Slide Mountain, just in case anyone’s
wondering. If we follow the road we’ll eventually find a cabin.
I’ll scout ahead.” He didn’t wait for an answer, just tore off into
the woods and started running on all fours.

Anastasia kissed Harry on the mouth. “I’ll
take the other side.”

“Be careful.”

She gave him a smile. “You know I will.”

Another kiss, and then she moved into the
woods on the right side of the road, running gracefully along until
she vanished from sight. Harry started walking up the road, and as
he walked he wondered how his canine-human guide knew so much.
Could it be the programming, or was it something else? Although he
should have been suspicious, he figured Doug wouldn’t screw him or
Anastasia. He had too much to lose. They all did.

As he tramped along, his mood started to
improve. Granted, he was still a fugitive on the run from both the
law and a monster, but he’d survived attack number two, was with
his girlfriend and another friend, and with luck he’d soon figure
out how to solve the riddle of their DNA.

The weather decided to get a bit warmer, and
sweat soon started to pour down his head. He would have loved to
just discard his suit, but had no spare clothes, and now his body
odor came through. A few cars passed him by, honking as they went.
Hitching a ride seemed like the thing to do, but then he figured no
one would pick up a guy dressed like a raccoon. It was dangerous,
anyway. You never knew who you might meet, but on the other hand he
didn’t want to meet Ivan.

He put out his thumb and hoped someone would
take him up on his request. Some of the drivers slowed down to
stare and chuckle before moving off, but no one bothered stopping
until one person, a woman in her thirties with a chubby, cheerful
face full of too much makeup, pulled her car over to the side of
the road. “Hey, you lost or something?” she called out.

Harry made his way over to her car and wiped
off some of the sweat on his forehead as he went. “Uh, my car ran
out of gas a few miles back and—”

“Oh, the car with the busted window?” she
interrupted, and eyed him up and down. “Yeah, I passed it on my way
here. What happened, party got too loud?”

“What?” He didn’t understand the question,
and then his mind started working. “Oh, uh, yes ma’am. The people
got a little drunk, someone chucked a rock at my window…you know,
kid stuff.”

“I hear you.”

He continued thinking up the lies as he went
along. “So I was driving up here to meet some people I know. My car
ran out of gas.”

She considered his words and finally nodded.
“I’m headed to the Slide Mountain Forest House,” she said. “My
husband and children are already up there.”

Time to lie and he did it fast. “Hey, that’s
cool! I’m staying near there. My, uh, friends are camping out in
the forest area.”

She stared at him. “You mean near Esopus
Creek, don’tcha?”

“Uh, yes ma’am, that’s right,” he answered
quickly and cursed himself for not even bothering to use his
computer to find out
something
about this area. “My friends
went up there last night before me, and this is my first time in
New York, so…”

“I hear you. Got lost, right?”

“Yes ma’am, I did,” he said, and forced
himself to adopt an ashamed air. It wasn’t so difficult,
really.

“Hop in,” she ordered, and then sniffed the
air. “Seems like you did some dumpster diving too, didn’t you?”

Aware of his stench, he felt the blood rush
to his face. “Uh, yes ma’am. Some of my guests emptied garbage cans
all over me…just…stupid stuff we did.”

The woman smiled. “Okay, you convinced me.
Anyone with that kind of wild story has to be trustworthy. I’ll
take you as far as my inn and you’re on your own from there. Wait a
minute, I’ll spread something out.”

In a quick motion, she twisted around,
grabbed an old newspaper that lay on the backseat, and spread it on
the passenger side for him. “Get in,” she said. Grateful for the
help, he clambered in the passenger side. She opened the window to
let the fresh mountain air come in and drove off, cheerfully
whistling a tune. “Hey, let’s listen to some music. It’ll help pass
the time.”

On went the radio and soon the sounds of some
soft rock ballad filled the air. Harry tried to relax, but suddenly
sat bolt upright.
What in the…?

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Anastasia
gracefully loping along like a large mountain cat. She dodged
effortlessly between the thick trees and bushes and resembled a
gray streak of lightning. He didn’t know she could run like
that!

“This is the life,” the woman said, snapping
him out of his daydream. She introduced herself as Sheila Murphy,
resident of Schenectady. “I like to take a vacation up here every
year, just get away from it all. What I don’t like is the other
kids picking apples and what have you.”

Her statement confused him. “I don’t
understand, ma’am.”

Sheila laughed and shook her head. “This must
be your first time up here. Well, it’s like this. The city kids and
their folks come up here and walk into the local apple orchards and
pick fruit, right? It just annoys some of the locals. Same deal
with the hay rides, the teens get drunk and smoke drugs…”

She suddenly shot him a wary look. “You’re
not into that, are you?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered truthfully. He had
no intention of trying drugs, picking apples, or going on a hay
ride. He was probably allergic to it, anyway.

Sheila nodded. “Well, you may be all right.
What’d you say your name was?”

He hadn’t said anything. “It’s Mark,” he
decided to offer, “Mark Simpkins.”

“Good to meet you.”

The music continued to play and then a news
flash interrupted the proceedings. “We interrupt this broadcast to
alert residents of New York and the outlying areas that the person
involved in the other day’s attack on FBI headquarters is still at
large,” the announcer said. “Harry Goldman, eighteen, is still
wanted in the connection with the large-scale slaughter of FBI
personnel and is now also under suspicion of causing one more death
at the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan yesterday evening. He is
approximately five-eight, one hundred and fifty pounds, with green
eyes and brown hair…”

Sheila reached over and with a snort of
disgust, switched off the radio. “That was a terrible thing,” she
muttered. “They were showing all those hurt and dead people on the
news channels yesterday. How could a person do something like
that?”

Harry said nothing. Now the authorities were
trying to hang another murder charge on him. He only hoped his
driver wouldn’t make the connection. He stayed lost in thought,
hoping he wouldn’t be found out until the car suddenly stopped.
Panic seized him, and jerking his head around, Sheila intoned
calmly, “We’re here.”

Oh yes, sweet relief! After getting out of
the car, he came face to face with the Slide Mountain Forest House,
a pleasant looking two-story white wooden house surrounded by
panoply of evergreens. They blanketed the area and he wondered if
there was a path he could follow. “Uh, thank you, ma’am,” he said.
“I’ll just be going now. My friends are probably waiting for
me.”

“You take care now, Mark,” she replied, and
after giving him a friendly wave, drove off. He hurriedly walked
past the house and into the forest, hoping no one outside of his
driver had seen him. Fortunately, there was a well-marked path, and
the trees, thick and dense, provided good cover. It was only a bit
cooler here, but better than being in the hot sun. He sat on a tree
stump wondering what to do and waited for a few minutes until the
familiar form of Anastasia bounded over to him. She stopped a foot
away and stood up.